BC POLITICS
Saved by @Jacobtldr

(1/21) The Republican Party is an organized gang of sociopaths.

 (2/21) Trump doesn’t care how many people in Omaha are stuck for hours in the freezing cold, over 3 miles from the nearest road or parking lot, after he’s left his rally, putting some in the hospital. And he clearly doesn’t care how many people die of Covid.
(3/21) One of the defining characteristics of a sociopath is that they view themselves as the only “real“ humans on the planet, and everybody else is basically a prop in the amazing story of their lives.
(4/21) Other people, they think, don’t feel emotions or pain or anything else with the intensity that they do. They believe they’re the only ones who matter, because they’re the only ones who truly exist.
(5/21) The Republican Party, starting in 1980, has brought that sociopathic worldview to politics, and made it a cornerstone of policy as well as a criteria for elective office.
(6/21) Reagan didn’t care how many people were harmed or died because of his “government is the cause of your problems“ or “starve the beast“ policies.
(7/21) George W. Bush didn’t care how many Americans or other human beings may die because of his lies about Iraq and WMD: if it helped him politically, it was all good.
(8/21) But Trump and the GOP’s sociopathy isn’t limited to using supporters as props and letting the people he thinks of as suckers suffer from hypothermia.
(9/21) The Republican-controlled EPA just authorized five years of a deadly pesticide being poured onto our food, so giant corporations and their shareholders could enjoy more profits.
(10/21) The Republican-controlled Interior department is destroying our national parks and selling off public land to GOP-donor mining and drilling companies.
(11/21) The Republican-controlled Agriculture department is cutting people off food stamps during the Trump Depression, while the Republican-controlled Department of Housing and Urban Development is trying to throw poor people out into the cold during a pandemic.
(12/21) The Republican-controlled Justice Department is openly giving a pass to criminal Republican operatives, supporters and donors, while prosecuting critics of their racist, police-state tactics.
(13/21) The Republican controlled CDC and FDA are cutting corners for big Pharma to help Trump win the election, while putting the lives of millions of Americans at risk.
(14/21) The Republican-directed Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is promoting privatized so-called “Medicare Advantage“ plans that often wipe out seniors who get sick, while they devastate Medicare itself and will make it difficult to pass Medicare for All legislation.
(15/21) Republican-dominated media organizations and radio and TV stations daily traffic in easily-disproven lies and are constantly trying to gin up racial hatred, all to benefit the oligarch class.
(16/21) Republican-aligned billionaires financed a plan to put rightwing judges on the Supreme Court; those judges are planning to repeat their 2000 scam of handing the White House to a man who lost the popular vote and only seized the Electoral College through voter suppression.
(17/21) There is not a single elected Republican with any consequential profile in America who acknowledges the dangers of climate change and the straightforward solution of ending our dependence on fossil fuels, simply because fossil fuel billionaires own them all.
(18/21) Republicans celebrate the Citizens United Supreme Court decision because it nakedly allows billionaires and giant corporations to own politicians and political parties.
(19/21) Republicans embrace white racist gangs that pretend they’re “militias“ because they’ll intimidate people of color who tend to vote Democratic.
(20/21) Sociopathy cannot be “cured“; it can only be controlled. Sociopaths need to be identified, isolated from society, and restrained in ways that limit the damage they can do to others.
(21/21) This is a central tenant of psychotherapy, and America must apply it to politics as well, before these Republican sociopaths totally destroy our nation and gut democracy around the world.

More from Thom Hartmann

Thom Hartmann
Thom Hartmann
@Thom_Hartmann
1/ It’s time to defund the GOP. In yesterday‘s rant, I laid out all the reasons why Democrats should put at the top of their priority list “defunding the Republican Party.“ Here’s a little background, and how to do it. (THREAD)

2/ Back in 1981, the Republican Party decided to defund the Democratic Party. While the Republican party had principally been funded by rich people and big business since the 1920s, the Democrats were largely reliant on the labor unions.

3/ So Ronald Reagan, as part of his “Reagan Revolution,“ figured the best way to destroy the Democratic Party was to destroy America’s unions. His first shot was to destroy Patco, the air traffic controller‘s union, and he did it in less than a week in August, 1981.

4/ He, with Republicans in Congress and conservatives on the Supreme Court than embarked on an eight-year campaign to eliminate unions from the American landscape, thus wiping out the Democratic Party’s ability to win elections.

5/ It worked, and by 1992 American union membership, and their ability to fund elections, had collapsed so severely that Bill Clinton and the Democratic Party had to take money from giant corporations and billionaires to prevail in that election year.
FOR LATER READ
Thom Hartmann
Thom Hartmann
@Thom_Hartmann
1/ We must stop Republicans from helping Trump “poison the wells“ and “salt the fields“ of America.

2/ Donald Trump‘s treason extends far beyond his efforts to damage Americans belief in our form of government, our elected democratic republic, that Trump’s oligarch buddies in Saudi Arabia, Russia and China also regularly disparage.

3/ Trump’s also actively damaging the ability of the incoming Biden administration to aid Americans during the Trump Depression, and to get the virus in check. In this, he has help from Steve Mnuchin and Mitch McConnell.

4/ While McConnell refuses to even allow a conversation in the Senate about the HEROS Act that already passed the House and would put money in unemployed Americans’ pockets, Mnuchin wants the Fed to return the CARES Act money that they’re leveraging to sustain the stock market.

5/ As Senator Ron Wyden said, “As the economy backslides amid skyrocketing Covid-19 cases, Secretary Mnuchin is engaged in economic sabotage, and trying to tie the Biden administration's hands.”
POLITICS
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Thom Hartmann
Thom Hartmann
@Thom_Hartmann
How can America prevent Republicans from stealing the 2024 election and installing a fascist? /1

Republican threats to have individual states choose electors for Donald Trump even though their citizens voted for Joe Biden are not about this election; they’re about putting a fascist in the White House in 2024. /2

And the reason Republican elected officials across the country are letting this drag out, even though they know Trump has no chance because Biden‘s margin of victory is so large, is to see how far they can push this in anticipation of 2024. This is a test. /3

The next election will not feature a failed, indebted businessman buffoon at the top of the Republican ticket; instead, it will almost certainly be a very competent neofascist, someone like Tom Cotton or Ted Cruz. /4

And their strategy to put him in power won’t be to win the majority of the votes: it will be to take the electoral college, either outright or through Republican-controlled state legislatures simply making it happen. /5
ALL
Thom Hartmann
Thom Hartmann
@Thom_Hartmann
1/ When will America wake up to the evil that has seized the Republican Party?

2/ We’ve seen it around the world and throughout history: when a political party or government exists solely to serve the very wealthy, and begins to lose power, they inevitably turn to authoritarianism and police violence.

3/ We saw this in Florida when Gov. Ron DeSantis sent State police with guns drawn to intimidate the family of whistleblower Rebekah Jones, who he’d earlier fired for refusing to lie about Florida coronavirus statistics and is publishing a daily “Florida coronavirus dashboard.“

4/ We see it with Donald Trump committing a felony for which you or I would immediately go to prison, trying to tamper with the outcome of a legitimate election by threats, intimidation, and offering bribes to government officials.

5/ We see it in Michigan where the Macomb County GOP seems to share an address with the group that showed up, armed, to threaten and intimidate the Secretary of State and her four-year-old son as they were preparing to watch “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas.”
POLITICS
Thom Hartmann
Thom Hartmann
@Thom_Hartmann
1/ Rebuilding trust in democracy and our American government requires both holding seditious Republicans accountable and restoring the protective functions of government. Here’s what Democrats must do and why. (THREAD)

2/ The reason tens of millions of Americans don’t believe Joe Biden won the election is a 40-year betrayal of the American public’s trust by Republican politicians, grifters, and con artists exploiting the once-good name of Lincoln‘s Party.

3/ Science, religion, and conspiracy theories are all, essentially the same thing: systems or attempts to explain the unknown, to make sense out of things beyond our senses or immediate, touchable reality. Thus, our vulnerability to con artists like Trump.

4/ It’s impossible for any individual to know or understand everything. We believe electrons make our computers work, but for all but a few scientists who’ve actually seen and measured electrons, it’s only a belief. We must trust their word.

5/ This is why trust is central to science, and why scientific norms and institutions require multiple layers and dimensions of confirmation before things are asserted as true or even probable.
DEMOCRACY

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Greg Olear
Greg Olear
@gregolear
Strange things are afoot at the Circle K. Let’s sort it out.

[THREAD]


1/ Two nights ago, Rupert Murdoch called on Mitch McConnell, after hours. Since then, two Fox News-related Twitter accounts have not tweeted.

2/ Trump fired Sessions on Wednesday, replacing him with human dildo/Putin collaborator Matt Whitaker. Sessions had asked to stay until Friday and was told to leave immediately. So there was clearly some urgency to install the dildo...er, puppet.

3/ The Democrats won the SHIT out of the Midterms. Come January, the House check on Trump will leave him so hobbled, he’ll be like the dude from Misery.

4/ Trump went to Paris, ostensibly for an Armistice Day centennial event. He skipped the event, and much of the dinner tonight, because of “weather,” which everyone seems to agree is a bullshit excuse.
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Alexander
Alexander
@37paday
1/ Imagine that as soon as the referendum result the EU announced that it was looking forward to the end of free movement of UK citizens in the EU


2/ Imagine if the EU said finally all those retired Brits in the EU27 could go home

3/ Imagine if the EU said finally all those Brits in the EU could stop driving down wages, taking jobs and stop sending benefits back to the UK

4/ Imagine if the EU said it was looking to use UK citizens as “bargaining chips” to get a better trade deal

5/ Imagine if the EU told UK citizens in the EU27 that they could no longer rely on established legal rights and they would have to apply for a new status which they have to pay for for less rights
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Caleb Howe
Caleb Howe
@CalebHowe
As usual is maddening how easy this is to understand and how much everyone refuses to understand it. There are two things happening here, and they aren't super hard to understand. There's the asshole administration and the asshole reporter.

The court said asshole administration revoked asshole Jim Acosta's press pass without due process. WH deemed him press, gave him a press pass, then they kicked him out without even being able to say who made the decision or on what grounds.

We want hostile, combative reporters. We **want** that. **You** want that. We want that because the press secretary of every single administration is a liar. Even the ones you like. Lying is their job. They show up to avoid answering, but give the appearance of being answerable.

It shouldn't be easy for government to just refuse to be answerable. It should be hard to dodge. Hard to kick people out. Hard to control the narrative. That shouldn't be easy for the gov't. Not even your most favoritest president.

You, the American citizen, want the truth. Reporters should be there to get it. That means asking questions doggedly, demanding answers. This is not an obscure idea. It should be obvious to anyone who's experienced having a president you didn't vote for. Super rare right?
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Andy Kim
Andy Kim
@AndyKimNJ
At my office in Congress I have an original ballot of Mandela’s election as reminder to never take democracy for granted. After yesterday’s senate vote, I turn back to Mandela’s first speech when released from prison 31 years ago this week. Here’s what we can learn (THREAD)


GRACE: “I greet you all in the name of peace, democracy and freedom for all.”

Robbed of 27 years of his life, no one would have faulted Mandela if he emerged from prison with anger. But instead, with his first words of his first speech in decades, he chose grace. 2/13


HUMILITY: “I stand before you not as a prophet but as a humble servant of you, the people.”

Mandela was revered by millions as a leader of conscience. But in his second sentence, he made sure to set the tone for humility and service. No individuals stand above the people. 3/13


SOLIDARITY: “I salute the working class...religious communities..the endless heroism of youth.. the mothers and wives and sisters of our nation”

He focused on the contributions of the many and showed respect to those often overlooked. He showed the vitalness of coalitions. 4/13


URGENCY: “Our struggle has reached a decisive moment.”

Mandela used the speech to set the tone for the work ahead. His release was not the climax, but instead just the possibility of change. No assumptions could be made of what comes next. 5/13
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Jennifer Taub
Jennifer Taub
@jentaub
✔️ We have begun. It's Day 4 of the Trump Impeachment Trial 2.0. The defense is putting on their case. The first lawyer is Van Der Veen.

1/


Already this is wackadoodle. Seems like the defense is trying to tell us not to believe what we saw. This lawyer has the audacity to say that the people assembled at Trump's speech were peaceful patriots

2/

This lawyer is claiming that Trump's speech on the ellipse on January 6th was was a policy speech about "turning out strong in the next primaries" and how this was about working on voting law reform.

A mere civics lesson.

3/

The lawyer is lying. The Clinton campaign never "declared that the election was stolen by Russia."

Also, this Trump lawyer is trying to claim that democrats objecting to some of the electoral votes is equivalent to Trump's incitement of violence.

4/

As we expected, Trump's lawyers are not going to address the merits. Instead this is what-about-ism

5/
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